77 years ago, the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima on 6 August and Nagasaki on 9 August. About 80,000 people died in a fraction of a second. More than one lakh and thirty thousand people died on the first day of the atomic bombing. The situation was not so different in Nagasaki. Forty thousand people were killed in a single moment as soon as the atomic bomb was dropped.
There were four Jesuits near the hypocenter of the attack in Hiroshima. But miraculously they survived this tragedy. They were not affected by the radiation that killed thousands in the following months. At the time of the accident, Fr. Hugo Lasalle, Fr. Hubert Schiffer, and Fr. Wilhelm Kleinsorge was at Our Lady of the Assumption Church. The church was one of the fewest buildings that had resisted the nuclear bomb blast.
Fr. Cieslik recorded in his diary that they sustained minor injuries from the broken windows. But the doctors who treated them later warned them that radiation could cause illness and premature death.
However, at the Eucharistic Congress in 1976, Fr. Schiffer attended and told his life story. He said the other Jesuits were still alive and that they had not been disturbed in any way. In the years that followed, dozens of doctors examined them. The big surprise was that not a trace of radiation could be found on their bodies.
They testify that the great force behind this miracle is the Holy Mother. “We were living with the message of Fatima. We prayed the rosary every day,” they explained. These priests firmly believe that it was God and the Holy Mother who saved them. The lives of these priests teach us a great deal about the extent to which the protection of the Blessed Mother is available to those who pray the rosary.